You guys may remember me posting about Little Mama, an abandoned kitten turned feral that was pregnant. Well, we've been trying to catch Little Mama and find her babies for a while now. She had them in mid to end October.
The one person that actually saw the kittens right after they were born said there were five or six of them. When they finally started feeding at the food dish, there were three. One disappeared off somewhere. Another died in our front lawn last weekend.
Last night, our dogs caught the last surviving kitten. I can only imagine how scared this baby was, though the dogs wouldn't hurt it at all.
See, these dogs know we've been trying to catch this one and Little Mama. Sonny was on his chain because he keeps running off. Cara however, wasn't on hers and Arlen doesn't have one at all because he just doesn't run off. Cara and Sonny are HUGE, Arlen is a little rat terrier mix.
So anyway, the kitten went into the back yard. I'm not sure how it slowed down enough for the dogs to get to it, or if it was simply just lying down and got found. It was about 11 pm at night. Sonny starts barking his head off. It wasn't his usual "I see an animal and think it's a puppy so want to play with it bark." It was more of a "Momma, you'd better get your lazy butt out here NOW" bark. I tell my son to go get the dogs.
He comes back and tells me the dogs have the kitten pinned down in the back yard. Quickly I put on my shoes and race outside. I wasn't worried the dogs would hurt it; they know better. I was worried the kitten would get away. I didn't need to overly worry though.
Every time that kitten would try to stand up to run away, Cara would take her big ass paw and knock her down. Then, Arlen would use his nose to nudge it over onto it's back. That baby wasn't going anywhere at all.
The kitten isn't interested in food or water right now. It's stools are loose and mucusy. (Yes, I mispelled it!) And, it's not even taking an interest in grooming itself. Now, this could be because it's a scared feral kitty. We do know it is sick with something because we buried it's sibling last weekend with no apparent outside cause of death. I'm hoping that the dogs ability to catch it isn't further evidence of how ill it is.
We do have an appointment with the vet in about an hour or so. It will get a full check up, necessary medications, shots if it's well enough and we'll be scheduling it's sterilization. Once it's healthy, vaccinated, and recovered from surgery, it'll be able to go back outside if it so chooses.
We do not know yet if it is a male or a female. We don't even know what it's life expectancy is yet. Hopefully, we'll get a good prognosis because it got to us just in time. Soon though, we'll be giving it a name. Something that means "Survivor". After all, this thng has survived a very harsh winter with hard freezing temperatures, it's survived other wild creatures, and it's survived the illness which killed it's sibling just last week.
I'm excited. Now if only we could catch Little Mama to get her taken care of! Anyone have any name suggestions?
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